Charlie Tinkers

Charlie Tinkers

Why doesn't my chat bot know who my dog is?

Why doesn't my chat bot know who my dog is?

I had a really interesting observation when testing the Chatlie chatbot on my portfolio website. I have some specific easter eggs in the knowledge base that should be retrieved, but there was one question that the model would never know the answer to "Who is Remi?" Remi is

I Built a Multitenant RAG Model Platform

I Built a Multitenant RAG Model Platform

In late 2023 I began doing some part time contract work on an existing application. It's a multitenant SaaS application, which I had never worked on before. The company owning the application has no engineers, no devops, no IT workers, and I basically fill all those hats as

What I Learned Automating My Home Server with AI

What I Learned Automating My Home Server with AI

There are plenty of places to land on the AI trend: doomerism, enthusiasm, skepticism, overreliance, etc. My personal relationship with AI has ebbed and flowed. Every time I see a new model I feel a bit of panic, a small identity crisis. Will my job still involve writing code? Will

I Built a Raspberry Pi Kubernetes Cluster from Scratch

I Built a Raspberry Pi Kubernetes Cluster from Scratch

One of the ideas I had to return to tinkering was playing around on a more fundamental level with Kubernetes (K8s). I have previous experience with RedHat OpenShift which is K8s under the hood. In my current role, however, we've gone full serverless, so I don't

The Spark for Tinkering

The Spark for Tinkering

I started coding over 20 years ago. That number is nuts to think about. It's crazier to think about what all has happened in those 20 years. A diploma, a degree, a marriage, a masters, a child, aging parents, and 11 years of industry experience across two companies.